10 Reasons Why Your Landing Page Is Useless

But there’s more to a good landing page than just looking good—if it doesn’t get results, it doesn’t matter how pretty it is!

Only about 22% of brands are happy with the conversion rates on their landing pages, but most don’t go through the trouble to optimize them.

Don’t let yourself be among the complainers who never take action—read on to learn 10 of the most common pitfalls, and how you can fix them.

1. Your Call-to-Action is Weak

If people arriving on your landing page can’t tell what to do right away, they’re likely to hit the back button and forget about you—so your call-to-action is probably the most important part of your landing page.

The CTA is below the fold (unless your above-the-fold copy is amazing at grabbing attention), or otherwise not as apparent to visitors as it should be.

The colors used in your CTA don’t stand out from the other elements on the page.

Your CTA is too boring and generic to get people to act (like “Buy Now,” “Click Here,” or “Submit”).

To get your visitors’ attention, your call-to-action has to stand out. Make it as clear and distinctive as possible to help your landing page convert, and split test alternatives to figure out what performs best.

2. You Use Images Poorly

While awesome images can boost your site’s aesthetic appeal and strengthen your user experience, some images are more likely to distract visitors—or even damage your brand.

Watch out for these mistakes when choosing images to use on a landing page:

Again, it’s worthwhile to spend plenty of time A/B testing to figure out the best word count for your landing page.

4. Your Landing Page Isn’t Relevant to Your Ads

People get frustrated when they click on an ad expecting one thing and then end up on a page with completely different information.

You must keep promises you make to visitors with PPC or media buys to drive traffic. You do that by ensuring the message stays consistent between your ads and your landing page.

Use the same keywords. MecLabs did a study that found one brand increased lead generation by 144% just by keeping the keywords the same across its ads and landing pages.

Tell people what they’ll find. Your ads need to communicate clearly what to expect from your landing page. If the point of your landing page is to get visitors to make free accounts on your site, your ads need to convey that goal.

Keep your message uniform. Keep the point your ads and landing pages convey as consistent as you can. Don’t confuse people by changing the message from one place to another.

5. Your Page Takes Too Long to Load

The typical Internet user is impatient—deliver content quickly, or they won’t convert.

A Moz study found that landing page conversions can go up by 14% when landing page load time is reduced from 5 seconds down to 2 seconds.

If your landing page takes too long to load, it can hurt conversions. The best way to cut your load time is to reduce HTTP requests.

Make sure any interactive elements or third-party apps on your site work seamlessly on mobile—nothing pushes mobile visitors away faster than a pop-up cutting off access to your site’s content!

10. You’re Targeting the Wrong Audience

Getting as many leads as possible is good, right? Not necessarily:

Targeting too broad of an audience means you won’t connect deeply with anyone. Clearly define your pitch to resonate with the people who are actually most likely to need and buy what you’re selling.

Buying untargeted or badly targeted leads wastes money you should be spending elsewhere

Targeting everyone attracts people to claim your opt-in incentives and bloat your mailing list without ever making a purchase. Design your landing pages to filter them out, and you’ll avoid the stress of dealing with such low-quality leads.

This is a pitfall of offering a teaser product at no charge. If it appeals to more than your ideal customers, you can collect junk leads that waste everyone’s time.

One solution is to require a small purchase at the beginning of the conversion process.

That forces prospects to invest in the solution, even if only a little bit—which can strengthen their relationship with the seller. Overall conversion might drop, but long-term sales might actually increase.

Post Author

Steven Mehler

Steven Mehler is an experienced writer, SEO expert and social psychologist that works as an editor at a local newspaper and a freelance writer at Resumes Expert. Steven also runs his own content agency and is writing a book. He has a long-term experience in writing articles based on blogging, marketing, SEO and social psychology.

Steven Mehler

Steven Mehler is an experienced writer, SEO expert and social psychologist that works as an editor at a local newspaper and a freelance writer at Resumes Expert. Steven also runs his own content agency and is writing a book. He has a long-term experience in writing articles based on blogging, marketing, SEO and social psychology.